


Ring Fall

by snowshus



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, space western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 18:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17792195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowshus/pseuds/snowshus
Summary: The rings are big and salt harvesters are a solitary lot.  So Rachel is understandably surprised to see the raft drifting towards her little moonlet.





	Ring Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [escritoireazul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/escritoireazul/gifts).



> I'm sorry for my bad science, I took many liberties with physics and biology for story-telling needs.

You can go whole cycles without seeing another soul in the Cassini division. There are real settlements on the outer moons and a small township that’s little more than a glorified trading post on Mimas but this close to ring fall there’s just single homesteads scattered across the larger glaciers and moonlets. The rings are big and salt harvesters are a solitary lot. So Rachel is understandably surprised to see the raft drifting towards her little moonlet. 

It’s a small, single occupancy life raft, it’s windows pitted with the scars of ice collision that mostly obscure the figure inside. It takes most of the day to drag it close enough to her airlock to risk opening. The atmosphere on the rings is thin and not the right chemical mixture for humans but it’s there, enough to survive the minute it will take move whomever is inside from the ship to the airlock. Checking once more that the airlock door is open and nothing is in the path, Rachel takes a breathe and lifts the door release. The air rushes out in gust and inside, passed out or possibly dead, is a woman with skin a rich dark color. Her white clothes are stained with a dark rust red, similar to the way tholin streaks through the ice that makes up the rings. 

Rachel does not have to time to spend admiring the strangers beauty or wondering where the blood on her clothes came from. She drags the woman out of the raft bed and into her airlock and with a quick press starts the air flow while she wrestles the door closed. Once they are safe in habitable atmosphere again Rachel begins checking on her guests status. It’s entirely possible she’s already dead and Rachel wasted a day she could have been sifting the ice for salt or fixing the damn automech on her airlock door. 

The woman is cold to the touch, but her heart is still beating-slow and faint but there. Upon inspection the rusty blood seems to all be originating from a short but deep puncture in her stomach. Rachel doesn’t know much about medicine except what she needs for the everyday troubles - small cuts, light asphyxiation - she sure doesn’t know what to do for a stomach bleed. She does the best she can. She cleans it and wraps it and after a moment’s deliberations applies fibroblast solution as well. Afterwards she sets the woman up in her bed and waits. There isn’t much else to do.

It takes the woman five days to wake up. Each day that passes Rachel is sure she’s going to die in her bed. She never does and finally opens her eyes while Rachel is changing her bandage and debating whether or not more fibroblast will help or hurt. 

“Who are you?” the woman asks.

“Name’s Rachel, who are you?”

“Where am I?” The woman asked instead of answering.

“My house, and you're welcome.”

The woman looks over at Rachel and waits. 

Rachel sighs. “You’re on the B side of the Cassini division, across the Huygens gap. Care to share what the Earth Alliance is doing all the way out here?”

“What makes you think I’m with the Earth Alliance?”

“That shirts pretty thin for a Ringer. We live on blocks of ice, we tend to dress warm. Also your ship had an Earth Alliance tag on it.”

The woman looks down at her ruined shirt, “I thought it was cute.”

“I’m sure it was, not very practical out here though.”

“I don’t suppose you have anything I could wear? I’d rather not show up to my unit in this state.”

“You got a comm on you? Because I’m not sure you how you plan to get back to them otherwise?”

“You don’t have a shuttle?”

“Sure, but I don’t got the fuel to reach Rhea on any day and Mimas won’t be back close enough to us for another week, besides what makes you think I’m gonna let you run off with my ship.”

“I need it.”

“I need it too. It’s the only one I got.” The woman eyebrows knitted together in confusion. Earth alliance is not known for asking twice, but this wounded soldier is hardly in a position to enforce Earth’s will and it’s nice getting to say no to them for a moment. 

“I’m kidding.” Rachel finally relents. “I’ll take you out to Mimas when it’s back in range, you can contact your unit from there. In the meantime you can help me out around here,” She says dumping a pile of clothes on to the woman’s lap. “As long as you can sit, you can fold. And maybe you can tell me your name?”

“Athelle.” The woman says carefully pulling a thick shirt out of the pile with a dubious look. 

Athelle does not turn out to be particular good at folding clothes or any of the other stationary, low movement domestic tasks Rachel asks her to do. She does get better quickly after waking up. With in two days she’s moving about the house. She still takes lots of rests, but seems well on her way to fine. 

Rachel come home from sifting one day to find her airlock opening automatically, and Athelle in a vacuum mask and outer suit sealing the control paneling back. Over the next few days lots of the homes little technical idiosyncrasies get smoothed out under Athelle’s skilled hands. 

On the morning of the sixth day, the last before they head to Mimas, Rachel gets up before the sun and dresses for going out. She tries to be quiet, but Athelle’s turned out to be a light sleeper when she wasn’t mostly dead. 

“Where are you going.”

“The spring spokes were developing last night, I’m gonna go watch them.”

“Spring spokes?”

“Yeah, you don’t know about the spokes?”

Athelle shakes her head. 

“Get dressed I’ll show you.”

Rachel helps Athelle up onto the roof her house, and sit close together on the thin ledge. “You see those dark splotches in the ring?” Rachel says pointing toward long dark streaks running perpendicular through B ring. “Those are spokes, they form in the spring and fall. They’re my favorite thing about living out here.”

Athelle looks over at her. “Why? it’s just some dark spots? What so special about that?”

“Just wait.” Rachel says as the sun rises over Saturn. The light creeps across the rings and when it hits one of the spokes it flares up bright and rainbowed and glittering. 

“Wow,” Athelle breathes. 

“I told you.”

“Yeah.” 

They sit there for the rest of the morning watching the sun light up each spoke as it rises. At some point Athelle had reached over and taken Rachel’s hand. “I wish I could stay.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.”

“I can’t. I have a duty, I can’t abandon my unit, but I’ll come back. When my tour is over. I’ll come back.

“I’ll be here,” Rachel promises. 

They spend the rest of the day inside the house tucked into the warm bed, where thick sheets and warm bodies chase away the ever present cold.


End file.
